A Block Party

We had our block party earlier this month.  It was the Sunday evening of the weekend of Summerfest, the Virginia Highland Civic Association's huge outdoor festival that usually takes place the first weekend in June. Summerfest ends late afternoon and our block parties don't start til evening, so we thought it wasn't too much of a conflict.  And it's not like we spend all day preparing for our block party -- although there is some preparation (perhaps a little more than is visible) it is not much, and we don't think anyone stays home and cooks all afternoon.  So we thought the date would work.

Lynsley talked to Morningside Presbyterian, and got permission for us to use their parking lot.  I printed up some flyers and Sally distributed them.  I sent out some emails and posted it on the Wessyngton Road page on Facebook.  Since one of our neighbors doesn't have email, I dropped a flyer and a copy of the email onto her porch through the cat door.

Late Sunday afternoon I put orange cones at the two entrances of the parking lot.  Mark dropped off a large folding table, Kathy and Lynsley brought card tables, and I took a folding table and a table cloth up to the parking lot.  Steve brought a charcoal grill and a bag of charcoal.  I brought sidewalk chalk and bubbles and glow bracelets, and paper plates and plastic cups and plastic utensils and napkins.  Lynsley brought a pitcher of ice water and a bottle of hand sanitizer and her trash and recycling bins.

Our neighbors -- most of them people we had met before, but not all -- came with food and folding chairs and small coolers with drinks.  Small kids and then bigger kids drew on the asphalt with chalk.  Caroline and Iain tossed a frisbee back and forth for a while  There was music, thanks to Mark and several friends of his.  There was plenty of food.

Some of us stayed there until long after dark.  I had forgotten about the glow bracelets while the children were there -- they had long gone home -- so the adults wore them and I put several together to make a blue glowing necklace for Bullwinkle.  Eventually people made their way home along with the chairs and the tables and by morning all that was left were the drawings the kids had made on the asphalt.

It wasn't the biggest block party we ever had, and there are others when things have gone on later into the night or at which there were more new neighbors we'd never met before.  But I think the street's youngest resident (at that time) and oldest resident both attended, along with people who'd live on the street for decades and others who were recent arrivals, and people who live in big new houses and from small older homes and from the apartments that are on the street.  This diversity is one of the special things about my street.  My favorite memory of the evening?  We have a neighbor -- I think she may be the oldest resident on the street -- who is an artist and speaks with a lovely Latin American accent.  She showed up fashionably late, towards the end of the party.  She was thanking the musicians for playing and then I saw her standing near them, listening, and dancing by herself in the dark.